


Creatrix

by babel



Category: Rome
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-08
Updated: 2010-02-08
Packaged: 2017-10-07 03:04:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/60755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babel/pseuds/babel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brutus cannot fail, because Servilia created him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Creatrix

Brutus is not an ambitious man, so they underestimate him.

Servilia can hardly blame them, of course, for expecting something weak in the thin, hunched little frame that his spirit is bound in. He seems alternately simple and pretentious, naïve and spoiled.

He is not any of those things.

She does not idealize her son; they may misunderstand his flaws, but he is not without them. She knows him well enough to know that. She _knows_ her son.

As she lays in her bed, waiting for news, waiting for revenge, she is sure that it will come, and everything will be better. Because she knows her son.

She is, after all, the one who created him, and she is the one who molded him.

* * *

When Brutus is a little boy -- big eyes and gapped smile where he's lost a baby tooth -- he is more interested in play than study. Servilia is told over and over by the herd of matronly old women who are supposedly helping her through this "difficult time" that it is normal, that he's too young for some of the things she's trying to force into his mind. Some of them even dare to exchange knowing looks.

The sort of looks that say: Poor, dear Servilia has lost her husband. She is trying to replace him or keep herself busy or whatever it is that a woman is supposed to do when she has become nothing but a widow.

Servilia does not pay attention to them. She is young and hard-headed; she has looked into Brutus's familiar eyes, and she has seen his soul inside of them. He is not a boy who should be allowed to waste himself with toys.

And so, when she can see his attention wandering once again from his tutor toward his stockpile of toys, she gathers them all into a chest and locks them away.

Brutus tries sweetness first to get his way. Then crying. And, finally, refusing to do anything but cross his arms and stare at the wall while he is supposed to be doing his work. At the advice of one of the idiot matrons, she makes a deal with Brutus: if he can recite this and this from memory and read that and that, he will be permitted one toy of his choosing.

This works for a while: Brutus is pleased with himself, and Servilia is pleased with herself. Until his favorite toys have all been retrieved from the chest, and his attention is once again devoted to them.

She does nothing at first out of frustration. Perhaps she was wrong. Perhaps Brutus is the sort of little boy who will do nothing but charm his way through life, only interested in indulging himself in meaningless enjoyments. One afternoon, as these thoughts course through her mind, he runs over to her with two little animal figures that his father gave him. Brutus wants to show her how brilliantly he can make them fight to the death. She looks away from him. She cannot bear to see him.

"Mama?" he says, as if she must not have heard because she isn't watching. "Mama, look! Mamamamamama." He tugs at her tunica. "Mama, see? See? The bird is pecking the elephant's eyes out, see? Mamaaa..."

She doesn't look at him. Not once. And when, finally, he gives up, she sees that he's gone and he's left his toys by her feet.

She does not speak to him for the rest of the day, and the next time that she spots him playing a few days later, she ignores him again, even at mealtimes. She has a slave put him to bed instead of doing it herself, even when she can hear him crying for her.

Eventually, he abandons his toys completely, and when she locks them away again, he doesn't argue.

* * *

When Caesar visits, Brutus will stop anything that he is doing to hurl himself at Caesar and throw his arms around him. Brutus is not terribly young child at the time, but he's still small enough for Caesar to lift into the air. And Caesar always does, sending Brutus into a fit of giggles. Servilia would be aghast at her son for being so demonstrative, but she does not mind it with Caesar, because they can exchange wan smiles that contrast Brutus's pink-cheeked grin, and it makes any of their real feelings feel small and controllable by comparison.

In every other respect, Brutus handles himself perfectly with Caesar. He does not show any possessiveness toward either of them, he does not seem to feel jealousy or anger when Servilia puts him to bed early so that she can spent the rest of the night with her lover.

As she tucks him in, he watches her, his eyes glowing gold in the candlelight the way his father's did. She pauses and looks at him. "What is it, Little One?"

"Are you and Caesar going to get married so that he can be my papa?"

Her stomach clenches and she can feel the sting of emotion behind her eyes, but she does not show it. She sits, calmly, next to him on his bed and brushes his hair off of his forehead. "Caesar already has a wife."

"Oh." He furrows his brow. "But he likes us better, right?"

She smiles. "Wife, husbad. Father, son. They're only words. It's the idea behind them that has power. I am as his wife, more than the woman called his wife is."

"Can he be as my papa, then?"

"He already is, Little One," she whispers, and she kisses his forehead.

* * *

When Brutus is a young man, he sometimes talks of girls. Not any particular girls. Just mentioning, occasionally, that they exist, as if waiting for Servilia to give him some idea of which one he should consider. She does not take the bait, she refuses to when he will not come to the point, and he finally says one night when they are alone:

"I am old enough now." He fingers his food, only looking up from it to glance at her now and then. "Perhaps, ah, Aulus's daughter? They're a decent enough family..."

She does not answer until he raises his head to look at her fully. His eyes are wide, and he looks very young, but she does not allow herself to smile. "Are you already sleeping with her?"

He blanches. The subject makes him nervous as does any that involves pleasure of any sort. "No. No, of course not."

"Who _are_ you sleeping with, then?"

"I..." His eyes search for an answer in her face, but she gives none. "No one. I would tell you."

Now, she smiles. "Aulus's daughter is hardly a beauty."

"She's-- Well, she seems nice. Like she would be a good wife."

"Do you think you could not do better?"

Brutus frowns and casts his eyes back down to his food. Servilia knows that he is under the impression that he has little to offer a wife, but she can't quite rid him of his humility.

"My dear," she says, turning her voice gentle and quiet. "If you find a girl that you wish to marry, I will not oppose you. I would only miss you."

"I would not leave you behind, Mother."

She wets her lips. "It would be... different."

"I know." He shifts his weight in his chair, again fingering his food. Without taking another bite, he dries his fingers on a napkin. "I am in no hurry to be married."

Servilia catches his gaze and holds it for a long moment.

"I'm glad," she says, some real gratitude slipping through.

* * *

When Brutus returns to Rome after leaving her for Pompey, she hardly speaks to him at all. She is not sure exactly what she wants to impress upon him with her silence. Perhaps that he had left her behind. Perhaps that he came back to Caesar. Perhaps that she is simply angry, and he is the only one who seems affected by her anger now.

She busies herself with other things, as does Brutus, though she does not know what business he has. Usually, she would have some slave follow him and report back, but he might notice and mistake her curiosity for concern.

But tonight they are both in the villa, and Octavia is not there. Brutus knows well enough to stay to his room when Octavia is around so that he can maintain his apparent blindness toward their relationship. He has always been quite good at such blindness.

Servilia sits alone in the atrium and, as if sensing that it is permissible, Brutus skulks out to sit near her. Not next to her on the couch, not even in the chair closest to the couch, but the chair a few meters away, across from her. Servilia has only one lamp lit, and she can only see his face in flickers.

He looks very young and more than a little lost. But she cannot feel pity for him.

"How--" His voice catches, and he clears his throat. "How was your day, Mother?"

The music of insects and some far off party filters down into the room. She closes her eyes to listen to it for a moment.

Brutus sighs, leaning back in his chair so that his throat is bared--some little prey animal giving himself over his attacker.

"How long must this go on? What do you want me to do?" he asks. He sounds tired. Devoid of anger or pride.

"Nothing," she says, curling her legs up onto the couch so that she is laying on her side. "I have never asked anything of you."

Brutus breathes a weak laugh. "No, not asked. Never _asked_."

"Do you have a point?"

"I..." He pauses, then slowly stands. She expects him to give up and leave, but instead, he kneels by her and rests his hands over hers. "I want to be your son again."

She flicks her eyes up at him. His expression is so earnest, and in the dim light, he is the reflection of his father. And his grandfather. And every ancestor in the line of men she'd wanted nothing more than to perpetuate.

But the resemblance is only physical.

"I did not raise you to be a man who does nothing but grovel."

He squeezes his eyes shut and bows his head. Slowly, he rises to his feet, letting his hands slip away from hers. "I cannot survive losing you, Mama. You know that I can't."

"Leave me," she says, her eyes focused just beyond him.

She closes her eyes and waits for the sound of his footsteps to fade away. When she opens them again, her eyelashes are wet.

* * *

When, finally, Brutus has made the decision, she sits with him and holds his hand. And again, when he stands up to the others and insists on an honorable tyranicide, she holds his hand. And when everyone has left, and they sit alone together in the atrium with the cold of night threatening, she watches him. He is sitting hunched with his elbows on his knees. His expression is harder than she's ever seen it, turning his features to stone.

But she knows her son, and she can tell by his eyes that his detachment is only physical. She wishes now that she had never allowed him to love Caesar. She should have seen the danger in it from the start, but at the time it had seemed so...

She brushes away her thoughts of the past. Regret is a fool's pastime. Instead, she goes to her son as he is now -- not exactly what she would have had him be, but the strength and the bravery that she always knew was there is finally showing -- and she kneels by him as he did her that night long ago, and she rests her hands on his forearm.

Brutus looks up at her, startled out of his thoughts. His expression has softened now, as it always does when he looks at her. She brushes her hand across his cheek, and he leans against the touch. She realizes now how much she missed showing him affection.

"I am very proud of you today, Brutus."

He wets his lips. "You know that we might die in attempting this."

"You will not die."

"Mother," he breathes, closing his eyes. "You know that it is a possibility. No... a likelihood."

There is no fear in his expression, but there is a sadness there. Servilia rises to her feet, holding his hands so that he rises with her. She fixes her eyes unflinchingly on his. "Listen to me. You will not die, because the gods favor your action. All of your ancestors, all the ancestors of our Republic, will protect you. Failure is _not_ a possibility. You must not think that, or the gods may be offended."

"And will they not be offended that I would kill a friend?"

She presses her lips together and brushes his hair off of his forehead. "My darling son, if you had nothing to lose, it would not be as strong of you to make this horrible sacrifice."

"You did not seem so--" He stops himself before his voice can rise to anger. "I am sorry. But I have trouble accepting your change of heart toward me after so long of... Of knowing that you had lost your love for me."

"No," she whispers, pressing her palm against his cheek. "No, Brutus. Never that."

His face is lined with pain as he stares at her, and she can tell that he is trying to discern if what she says is real. She lets him search for a few moments for what she knows he will find, then she pulls him close into a hug. He grips at her like a frightened child.

She holds him for a long time, whispering again and again into his ear, "It will be okay. It will be okay, Little One."

* * *

Servilia lays in her bed, waiting for news.

Someone -- a slave, she does not bother to notice which -- tells her that there is no knowing when news will come. That she should eat. That she should drink. That she should, at least, sleep.

Servilia says nothing until the voice disappears, and she is left alone again.

Today, her son is fighting for the Republic. Today, he will become a hero. Emulated. Respected. Loved. He will return to Rome and the people will cheer for him, because they will see the face and the stance and the glinting gold ring of a hero. Even the lowest amongst them will see the truth that she has seen all of her life.

Brutus will not fail. He will not die. He will write his own name into history, and any of the lies that were told that turned Brutus and the others into traitors will fade away with time. And Atia's son and Atia's lover and all the Julii will fade away with them.

She knows that Brutus will not fail. She created him. She molded him. She made him what he is.

She is the one who led him to the battlefield where he fights today. She is the one who pushed him when he would have been content with a mundane and unimportant life. She is the one who will be guilty if...

Servilia knows her son. He will not fail.

He cannot fail.


End file.
